


Road Trip

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Body Image, Corrupted Steven Universe, Crying, F/M, Healing, Horns, Hugs, Kissing, Mental Health Issues, Steven Universe Future, Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23164708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: He can’t take anymore. He can’t hurt anyone else. It’s a hard choice, but Steven knows that he has to leave Beach City, at least for a little while. There’s only one person who could possibly talk him out of it…
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 64





	Road Trip

The parking lot of the car wash was quiet right now. Nobody was around to try and talk Steven out of this. The van had been destroyed in the rampage, and Greg was off getting it repaired. When he was on the road, he could give his father a call and explain everything. The man would understand.

Steven looked at the scratches on the Dondai. All he had done was shut the door, and now there were little white lines in the paint. By the time he would be back, there would be marks everywhere, he was sure of it. He looked at his new hands, then at his face in the reflection of the window.

The horns couldn’t be growing, could they? No, that much was in his head. The ugly white points jutted out from his flesh right above his eyebrows. Every time he scowled or cried, he felt their weight first and foremost. The skin around their crystal base of the horns was rubbed raw from the motion of his emotions, healed through his natural ability, and torn again. If it was painful, Steven didn’t register it anymore. 

Even the claws didn’t bother him that much right now. He didn’t touch his face as much, didn’t grab or pluck or wash roughly. Everything had to be gentle now, and the tiny scars all over his body reminded him of that. For some reason, the purple patches were the only ones that hurt when he touched them. The splotches on his skin were random but thankfully minimal. The only place where they were a real problem for Steven was over his face. He hated the dark patch that ran from his neck to his eye socket, the roughness of its coverage. No amount of lotion or healing spit could make it diminish. He would grow up with it, he would age with it, and he would die with it.

Steven grimaced and checked his teeth again. It was hard having the predatory sharpness all around his mouth. His jaw had morphed to fit the shape, becoming more angular, squaring out the bone and muscle to accommodate the new teeth. The body he was living in no longer felt like his own. He didn’t speak much these days, but the young man knew his voice had changed as well. At least, he thought, the tusks had diminished when he came back. They merely rested in front of his mouth, distending his lips with their massive presence. Steven had to measure his words to keep from lisping. It gave him an excuse not to talk. Besides, strangers balked at him now — what good would talking do?

There was only one road out of Beach City now that he had destroyed the other one. Steven felt a shiver of familiar guilt. He was happy for once not to remember what he had done, what he had been. Every Gem in Little Homeworld must feel like this. The empathy for his fellow Gems had never been stronger. It’s why he had to leave.

He had already double-checked all of the things he would need to survive on his own. If the worst came, he had his phone and his father for financial support, and if even more bad things came after, Steven knew he could survive on his own in the wilderness. The warp pads worked well enough for him to get to places like Watermelon Island. Could he live off of watermelons? Would they change their weird little cult to fit his cannibalistic ways if he came? For the first time in weeks, Steven let out a little chuff of laughter.

Most of his clothing had been shredded already. The little spikes that stuck out of his spine ensured he would never value a shirt again. There was no tail, thank goodness, and wearing sandals all the time meant that the claws on his toes didn’t get in the way of anything. The heavy sweatshirt he wore was enough to keep him covered. The jeans rubbed weirdly on the corruption patches that dotted his legs and backside, but it didn’t bother him too much. Nothing bothered him too much these days. He couldn’t have taken it.

Time to go. Steven gingerly reached for the door handle and plucked it open with a click. The door had been open maybe two inches when Steven felt a presence behind him. He didn’t get a chance to see the reflection. The boy jumped to the side as a hand hurtled past him and shoved into the car door, slamming it shut with the force of untold anger.

Connie Maheswaran fumed through her nose. Steven hadn’t heard her sprinting up to the car, but maybe that had been her plan, to sneak up, to make sure that he didn’t run away. The guilty Gem knew he would have if he had heard her coming. Steven’s heart beat double-time from the rush of the ambush and from the intense turning in his stomach. He had said all of the goodbyes he needed to say already. This was too much for him.

“Connie… I —”

“Don’t… Don’t you  _ dare _ say a word, Steven Universe.”

She had never been angry like this before. Steven balked in humiliation. This was the confrontation he had been intentionally avoiding. Connie’s rage was justified. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. Her t-shirt was uncharacteristically wrinkled, and it looked like she had just thrown the closest shorts and shoes on that she had before sprinting over. Had she come all the way from her house? It didn’t matter. She had found him. Even the sounds of dusk seemed to vanish in awe of her presence.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Connie said, her voice rising, “I couldn’t eat, I haven’t even looked at my homework since you came back, and as soon as you’re recovered you’re just going to leave us!? You’re going to leave me like this?”

Steven opened his mouth, but Connie thrust a single finger in his face like a dagger, with more daggers coming from her eyes. 

“We did not spend hours trying to get you back from that thing just for you to vanish on your own. Your dad, the Gems, all of us helped you because we care about you. If you’re in pain, we need to know so we can keep helping you! Because we want to! Because we love you! Is there something about that you’re not getting, after all these years? Why can’t you just —”

Connie’s lips tightened. Steven could see her throat close up as the tears began to flow. He froze, uncertain what to say, frightened by her outburst. Connie balled her hands into fists and raised them both, taking one step towards her best friend. The boy flinched, but the hands merely settled on the front of his shoulders, above his tensed biceps. Connie’s head lowered as she shook with exhaustion and exertion.

She was so tired. She had to be. Steven felt her rest her full weight against him here, but he didn’t move an inch. He felt like his legs had turned to stone. He was consciously aware that he should say or do something, but when Connie began to sob, only a single tear rolled down his cheek. The droplet trickled over the corruption scar in an erratic line, stinging the tender flesh.

Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl had told him everything that had happened to get him back down to normal. Steven didn’t remember any of it. There were several video recordings, some of which found their way online, and Steven had spent a day watching in bed and looking at his body.

The destruction was incredible. They hadn’t captured the transformation from human to monster, but when he had watched the video Steven had felt once more his skin splitting apart, a phantom sensation of his arms and legs doubling in size, tripling, growing beyond anything physically possible until he had shapeshifted into the roaring leviathan he had seen on the screen. The rampage had allegedly lasted for hours as the Gems made a battle plan, guiding the creature as far away from the town as they could. Nobody knew what Steven was capable of in this form.

Steven had cried to himself as he watched his father and Connie singing. Their voices came together in perfect human harmony, and then the Gems had joined in, and then all the inhabitants of Little Homeworld, and the chorus that surrounded that strange, horrible worm on screen came to a close. The shrinking, the fading, the shredded clothing in the dirt was all that Steven could recall in his mind. In the video, he looked up with giant purple eyes into Connie’s smiling face, and as he played it back Steven remembered the exact thought that had gone through his head. It was an apology, but he didn’t know what it had been for.

Here and now, Steven wanted to hug Connie, but he couldn’t make his arms move. The girl sniffled after a minute and straightened up.

“Why can’t you just let us help you?” she choked.

“Connie.”

Her name was calm on his tongue. Steven was tired too. He raised hand and took Connie by the wrist. She waited for him to make some move, and Steven knew he should do something. He was frozen in place. Connie deserved better than this. She had come for a goodbye — no, she had come to stop a goodbye and to stop him from leaving. Steven had already made up his mind, but she was wrenching that decision away from him and it was as painful as waking up.

“I need to be by myself for a little while,” he said, his words heavy and slurred. “It’s what’s best for everyone. In case something happens again.”

“What about if something happens and we’re not there to help?”

“Nothing like that’s ever going to happen again.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that.”

She was right, of course, but Steven had faith in his own body. He couldn’t tell her how tired he was just existing. The culmination of emotional weight and stressors was what had broken him before, and without that attachment, there was nothing to trigger another transformation. As far as he knew, that was the case, and he needed to try to be normal. There was no such thing as a ‘normal’ life for him, but being away from all of this, from the town and from the Gems, was the next best thing. He needed to remove himself.

“It’s not going to happen,” he repeated.

Connie must have sensed he was putting his guard up again. Steven recognized it in himself, and he could see how much his decision frustrated his friend. It must have been this frustrating all the time, from the first time he raised his shields and retreated into bad choices. This time, though, he knew he was making poor choices. He watched Connie’s face scrunch in anger, then pity, then misery at the knowledge that she wasn’t going to get anywhere.

“Please don’t go. I know it’s going to be hard, but we care about you so much, Steven. If you leave then we’re just going to be worried sick, all the time.”

“I-I know. And I’m sorry. But I can’t risk hurting you.”

“You’re already hurting me!” Connie shouted. 

“Well if I hurt you no matter what then I might as well leave so maybe you’ll have a chance to forget about me!”

“Is that what you’re going to do? Forget about all of us?”

“No!” Steven said. “I’m doing this for your sakes, for all of you! Why can’t you see that loving me is just — just bad!”

That shocked Connie into silence for a moment. The girl straightened up, energized with her new and definitive goal. Steven felt like biting his tongue as he let go of Connie’s wrist. He hated arguing like this. They had done it before, once while they were out together, about the future. They never got angry like this, not at each other. Steven felt his heart pounding in his chest. Each thump asked him the same question: why? Why was he arguing? What was the point of it all? Pushing Connie away was easy, but he didn’t want to do that.

“I would give everything to make you stay here, Steven,” Connie said. “I wish I could make you feel that. I… I don’t know what happened, to make you not love yourself anymore. But I know there was a time where I wanted all that positivity in your soul, and I asked myself how you were able to love yourself so much. But you’re you. I thought you loved yourself like how I loved you, and it all made sense.”

Control had happened. A loss of control had happened. Steven’s twisting, cascading nonsensical emotional travesties had happened. Puberty had happened. Adulthood, like it or not, was happening, and Steven knew he wasn’t prepared. There was nothing to love if there was nothing to take responsibility for. Steven knew there were moments where his motions had been involuntary and his actions had been based on those spur-of-the-moment reactions. He knew that his thoughts weren’t always his. He wished he could tell Connie how much he had hated those thoughts and how much he regretted every moment that he didn’t know what he was doing. The time of corruption had marked the worst point in his life. Nobody in the world, not a single human, had been out of control like he had been. The monster he had become was the ultimate wildness. It was everything he hated about his soul, manifested in the flesh.

“You don’t know me like I know me,” Steven murmured. He paused. “I don’t even know myself anymore. Maybe I’m going to find out.”

“You don’t think you’ve been honest? Is that it?”

“Too honest. I haven’t been...thinking. Around you guys, around dad, the Gems, everyone who lives here, I hadn’t had to think about talking or living or the way that I affected you. I thought I had it all figured out when I didn’t have myself figured out.”

“Being alone isn’t going to change any of that, Steven. It’ll be the same, but just more lonely. And I know that you hate that.”

“...I deserve it.”

The words spluttered over his lips. It had been so hard to say, and Steven found himself taken aback. Now it was his turn to have his throat close up. Connie watched closely as he leaned against the car, the spurs of his spine digging into his shirt. 

It was penance. That was all, nothing more. Steven hated feeling sorry for himself, but he could at least control it. He could punish himself for what he had done more than anyone else in the world, and he knew how to hurt himself in a way that nobody else could. Being around anyone he knew, anyone he loved, was a reminder of his future. Being alone was a reminder of the guilt. The more he ruminated, the more he would feel the punitive measure of his own action. He was in control.

“I-I just hate thinking about what I  _ did _ ,” Steven whimpered, crossing his arms tightly. “I hate that I tore up the town. I hate that I transformed into that  _ thing _ , a-and that you had to follow me, and that you worried and that you still feel… You have nothing to feel bad for, you did nothing wrong, and I’m still making you feel bad.”

“I don’t feel…”

Connie sighed and wiped her face. Both of them stood there for a moment composing themselves. At any other point, it would have almost been funny. Steven wished he could feel a smile coming on, but he forced it down. Now wasn’t the time.

“I don’t feel bad like that,” Connie said slowly. “Steven, I... We love you. You know that, I’ve said it before a million times, but we do. I can’t explain how or why you’re so important to us. All I can do is tell you that you are. You have to trust me when I say that it doesn’t matter what happened in the past when we have a future ready to make it all better.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Your past is easy. You’re a good person.”

“And you are, too! Even if you don’t feel like it now, you’re trying, and if you weren’t a good person you wouldn’t even consider it.”

It was true, but it was obvious. The Dondai creaked as Connie leaned against it too. It was a warm summer this year. The evenings brought heat down from the afternoon and leveled it in dense layers around them. They were swimming in heat. Steven didn’t feel it in his sweatshirt even though at any other time he would be dying. The sweat came naturally. He probably smelled awful.

“You know, I took a look at myself the other day,” Connie said.

“What?...”

“Inside, Steven. I had to think about all the time that I’ve spent thinking about you, and you alone. If you knew how much of my life has been around you, well. I bet you’d know what actual guilt was then.”

Steven felt his stomach drop at the thought. He hadn’t considered that, how much he had eaten away at Connie when they were children. While he was living his life as a Crystal Gem, and she was trying to be a human being, it sounded like he had eaten up her brain and heart with whatever nonsense he brought into her soul. Steven clutched himself gently and turned away. He heard Connie give a little snort of laughter.

“But that’s just what happens with the people we love, isn’t it?” she said. “They take up so much of our thoughts and feelings that we just accept what they give us. I can’t think of a day that you haven’t crossed my mind, Steven Universe. And that’s okay. And that’s wrong for me to think that way. But I don’t care.”

“Connie, I shouldn’t — you should be worried about yourself! Not me! You have your own life to live, and —”

“Don’t you think I wondered about that too? I had to ask myself how much of my life was worrying about you. But Steven, it’s my own life. And I get to decide whether or not it was interfering. You know what? I still don’t know. But I know this: right now, you need someone to worry about you. I-I’m worrying out of love. I’m not blind. I know it’s too much.”

“...I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. It’s… It’s okay.”

Steven knew he shouldn’t have felt guilty, but it was all too much. Of course he knew how much his family and friends cared. No matter how much he had hurt them, they would still care. The boy wondered how far it would go, what the breaking point could be. There had to be a limit to how much they would forgive him. But that was all based on his goals, his choices. The things that happened involuntarily couldn’t be blamed on him no matter how much he blamed himself.

That was the rub of it all. Blaming himself was easy and fixing himself was hard. Steven rubbed his arms as he thought about the purpose of his self-imposed exile. By leaving, he could be in his own head for a while, away from people who would make him feel guilty. But these were the same people who wanted to forgive him. Did he even need forgiveness? Steven felt another pang of sadness inside at the thought. He felt like he was being granted clemency for something he didn’t deserve. That was where all this pain was coming from. He looked over at Connie and felt a wave of mixed emotions. Steven couldn’t possibly imagine what was going through Connie’s head. 

No, that wasn’t true. She loved him. He loved her. He could never say it out loud like she could. All the talk of love was missing those three words. When he was a child, Steven would have said that he loved Connie at any time, any way, as easily as he was breathing. At eighteen years old, he could barely look his best friend in the eye. She deserved better, but she wanted him.

Could anyone love a monster? Steven turned his face away. Maybe once he returned, they could talk. His body and soul had never been adequate for a lover, and now, well.

“Nothing I say can keep you here, can it,” Connie said quietly.

“...I’m already packed up. I’ve mapped it out for at least six months.”

“Maybe it’ll be like a vacation. And you’ll come back with pictures and souveniers.”

“I’ll try to have fun for you. I mean, as much as I can.”

Connie smiled weakly. She wiped her eyes, but Steven still saw the tears. He understood them better than anyone. If he hadn’t spent the last week sobbing his heart out, he might have shared some. Connie slid alongside the car until their shoulders touched. Somewhere in the underbrush, a warbler sang out to them. It was a perfectly peaceful evening to vanish.

“You know, I saw a show like this,” Connie said after a moment. “There’s this highschool girl whose boyfriend gets cursed, and he gets transformed into this ogre-beast-thing, and it’s a romantic comedy about her helping him in his daily life, trying to show she loves him even when the world thinks he’s only a monster. It was cute, very anime.”

Steven felt his stomach turn a little, but he wasn’t sure why.

“How does it end?” he asked.

“Well, the next season hasn’t come out in the U.S. yet. I guess we’ll see.”

“I guess so.”

If he went out in public here, he knew how the townspeople would react. Everyone would wonder how he was, everyone would gasp and click their tongues and express their sympathy for him. Steven couldn’t stand it. When he went out into the world, with those purple splotches and horrible horns, there would be a sense of fear. People would hide their children behind their backs as he passed on the street. He would be asked by trembling minimum-wage employees to leave the coffeeshop because he was making other customers uncomfortable. He would spend many nights sleeping in the back seat of the Dondai because he wouldn’t be allowed in a hotel. It was all part of the plan. Steven was perfectly aware of how miserable things were going to become without the comfort of home. Maybe he needed that. His skin needed to be thicker, he needed to be more resilient. Human beings existed beyond the border of Beach City and the eastern seaboard. The world needed to see him for who he was now.

Steven closed his eyes and let his arms fall to the side. The back of his claws touched the gentle smoothness of Connie’s fingers, but he didn’t dare grab. More than anything, his heart begged silently for her to come along. They could sleep under the stars together. With Greg Universe’s money they could live in frugal comfort. But Connie had a life to live outside of hotel-hopping and standing at gas stations. She truly did deserve better. When Steven got back, he knew he had to prepare for her having found someone at school. He could never be her highschool monster boyfriend. This wasn’t some show. Life was painful. His claws could leave scars on her skin. His horns could pierce her body.

“Steven…”

The turn was sudden, and the weight of Connie’s body as she rolled over to pin him against the car was even more so. Steven froze and his eyes shot open. Her face was so close to him. All her perfect features blurred as she pressed her body against him in a half-hug. Every one of Connie’s motions were caught in the space between caution and overwhelming need. 

Steven kept his eyes open as Connie leaned in for a kiss. What else could he do? There were the tears again, one single stream from each eye before he closed his lids on the world. His lips came together in silent mourning. Connie’s held breath was warm on his mouth. He felt his exposed tusks digging into her cheeks, and the sharp enamel started to stab into her skin. Steven could sense Connie stiffened in pain, but she held the kiss even longer, even stronger, her arms tucked up underneath Steven’s own.

This was the kiss Steven had dreamed of. It was direct and horrible and filled with love and meaning. The patches of corruption under his clothing ached as Connie’s warm body rubbed against him. They were all grown up. Their lips parted just enough to become flush with one another. Connie let out a silent cry, an inaudible whimper, as the tusks pierced her. Steven reached with shaking hands and held the girl by the waist. It was the only comfort he could give.

When she broke the kiss, Connie and Steven took a breath at the same time, an invisible parabola of spittle and teenage musk connecting their mouths. Steven opened his eyes and saw Connie trying to hold back her tears. Her cheeks were blotchy and there were two trickles of blood running down past the corners of her mouth. 

The boy let go with his right hand. He stuck his index finger in his mouth, then pressed it twice against her face, one gentle touch for each piercing. The light sparkled as the wounds closed up and left only dried blood in their stead.

All their kisses would be like this in the future. No matter what Steven did, short of tearing his own body parts out, he would hurt her. It was a fitting compromise. But he knew in his heart that Connie had realized she was going to be hurt. She had come in for the kiss knowing it would cause her pain. That was how she had always approached Steven, wasn’t it? Everyone in Steven’s life came to him knowing that being around him would be painful. Everyone knew how much he would hurt them, and they came in anyway. Seeing the pain in practice made Steven’s body start to shake.

What else could he do? The boy straightened up and hugged Connie as he started to cry. The girl hugged him tightly and immediately, her hands squeezing the back of his sweatshirt as the first sob bubbled out of his throat. The pain of insomnia wracked his poor muscles, and he knew that Connie had been sharing in his pain in her own bedroom however many miles away. He had to turn his head to keep from tangling his protrusions in her hair, but he wanted to badly to bury himself in her neck and nestle in the warmth forever.

He didn’t want to leave, but he had to. There would be no punishment for him if he didn’t inflict it himself. There would be no journey if he didn’t take himself on it. Steven didn’t want to get better and he didn’t want to recover without feeling like he had served some invisible penance. As obtuse as it was, it was the only thing that he knew how to do right now. Steven hated himself for feeling this way, he hated Connie for loving him despite it, and he came back to hating himself again for wanting so badly to stay.

But he would be back. Maybe it would only be a month, maybe he would chicken out and come back. After all, there was no shame in bailing. If he called up his father while he was halfway across the country and said that he wanted to come home, he knew that the man would be overjoyed. Greg would tell the Gems and Connie and the rest of the town and they would all welcome him back with open arms. Why did the thought hurt so much?

Steven knew he didn’t have to leave right now. There was a moment of peace in this hug, in rocking back and forth here in the parking lot of the car wash. The world had not yet chewed him up and spit him out. The summer begat a feeling of home. In between Connie’s arms was a whole history of Steven’s love. As they hugged, Steven took in the scent of his best friend’s hair, her skin, the perfect and undefinable taste of her kiss. He would remember that. Steven thought about months down the line, when he would step out of his car with a hairy chin and dirty clothes, and Connie would be waiting there for him with another kiss, standing in the wintery weather of the eastern seaboard. The blood on the snow would be so pure.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Novantinuum on Tumblr for their corrupted!Steven inspiration! And thank you for reading <3


End file.
